Is early dining rushed?

[mividajp]

For those that have been on any of the DCL ships....Did you feel rushed to finish your meal and leave at the early dining? My family and I like to enjoy our meals. Not that we're slow eaters but we don't like to rush either.

 

We prefer early dining because of the kids but we don't want to hate eating dinner every night because we're getting rushed through it. What's been your experience?

[Shmoo here]

For those that have been on any of the DCL ships....Did you feel rushed to finish your meal and leave at the early dining? My family and I like to enjoy our meals. Not that we're slow eaters but we don't like to rush either.

 

We prefer early dining because of the kids but we don't want to hate eating dinner every night because we're getting rushed through it. What's been your experience?

 

Not at all rushed. We've done early seating on all cruises but one and we've never felt that we were hurried out.

 

There's roughly a 3 hour gap between early seating and late, so there's plenty of time.

[gambit57]

No. I've never felt rushed on any line I've been on (I only choose lines with traditional dining; personal preference of mine). As Schmoo said, they give you 3 hours. If you're rushed in 3 hours, I'd say that's unreasonable on the diner's part.

 

I take my sweet time. And we order pretty much the whole menu. The last cruise (the Wonder), we took pictures of the food (yes, we're now one of those people). Never felt rushed.

[moki'smommy]

Never felt rushed, regardless of seating time. Normal dining time runs around 90 minutes...even if we are lingering over dessert and talking, 2 hours pretty much maxes it out.

 

While there is more time than this between starts, the staff does need time to clean up and re-set. However, I can't see sitting there for more than 2 hours. Your kids won't last nearly that long, so one parent can excuse themselves between courses and take them over to the programming.

 

On my recent cruises there has been 2 1/2 hours scheduled between main and late seating, not 3 (on DCL).

[BullDawg91]

I've had early dining once on what was probably a capacity Dream cruise. The MDRs were crowded and amazingly noisy. The dinners were stressful. The rooms felt filled past capacity. I said I wouldn't do early again. I'd eat in Cabanas first or by the pool.

 

On the next cruise which was on the Wonder at spring break, we had late dining and found it way more pleasant. We also enjoyed a snack from the pool deck or room service before going to the early show.

 

I had kids with ages between 6 and 11 on both cruises.

 

 

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[moki'smommy]

Early (main) seating is full of noisy children. Sorry, that's just part of life on most DCL sailings. Most parents request main when they have young kids. Many parents can't or don't enforce reasonable standards of behavior at dinner (when mine was young, a failure of behavior at dinner meant that the child was removed from the dining room). The dining rooms do not have adequate sound reducing materials built into their structures and/or wall coverings--a design flaw.

 

That doesn't affect whether dining feels rushed (OP's question), but certainly affects the quality of the dining experience. I've never quite forgiven DCL for eliminating their "adult only/older children" rotation. In the early days of DCL, your dining rotation was based on the age of the youngest child in your party unless you had requested a particular rotation or server. This resulted in one rotation being almost entirely adults cruising without children and families with teens/sometimes tweens. There were occasional families with young ones who had requested a particular server or rotation, but these were rare. Overall, it resulted in a MUCH more quiet experience.

 

And yes, we prefer late dinner with a "healthy snack" about 4 pm. Sorry, I can't go from noon to 8:30-8:45 (time the food actually arrives) without eating something.

Edited January 30, 2015 by moki'smommy

[mividajp]

Thank you for ALL of the replies. We're having a really hard time deciding between early and late dining. My husband and I would probably prefer late dining and my daughter would be ok as long as she had a snack. The problem is that we're traveling with my in-laws. Even though my BIL has two kids of his own, he's not very patient with other people's kids.

 

The two nephews are early birds, early to eat, early to bed. I'm not sure they can make it to late dinning. However, if the dinning room is filled with screaming, loud kids, my BIL will refuse to eat in the MDR.

 

If we originally ask for early dinning and then decide we want late dining is it possible to change after the first day?

[davidmbfonz]

We faced similar concerns and chose 1st seating initially, but ended up changing it to 2nd seating, with no problems. You may want to choose 1st seating if it's still available because it's the more desirable (popular) seating. You should have no trouble changing to the later seating if you need to.

 

Have fun!

[mividajp]

Thank-you! That is what I was hoping for. We're going in Sept so hopefully the cruise won't be completely full. We'll ask for early dinning and if the adults can't handle it we'll try to switch.

[moki'smommy]

The dining rooms always LOOK full because they remove tables as needed to keep them that way. That is, they are assigned full. Empty tables are only when people don't show up that night. But September on a classic ship is a great time. As noted, sometimes not at/near capacity (we've been on a Magic cruise of 1500. Normal is 2500 and packed full is 2700). The other benefit to September is fewer school age kids. And ALL the toddler parents want early dining. Works out great for those of us who want late.

[knorrisb07]

not rushed at all. They have programs tailored for both early dinning and late dinning. So your schedule always works fine

[mollyeilis]

Thank you for ALL of the replies. We're having a really hard time deciding between early and late dining. My husband and I would probably prefer late dining and my daughter would be ok as long as she had a snack. The problem is that we're traveling with my in-laws. Even though my BIL has two kids of his own, he's not very patient with other people's kids.

 

The two nephews are early birds, early to eat, early to bed. I'm not sure they can make it to late dinning. However, if the dinning room is filled with screaming, loud kids, my BIL will refuse to eat in the MDR.

 

If we originally ask for early dinning and then decide we want late dining is it possible to change after the first day?

 

Do you have to dine together?

 

We cruised with cousin's family and my aunt, and we didn't dine together. We realized the kids wouldn't eat if they were all sitting together (it's what happens at Sweet Tomatoes on WDW trips), and we have different styles of dining, so we opted to not get our dining linked together.

 

We spent time together elsewhere and at other times. It went very well.

[Cedricandsophie]

We only do late dining. I did early dining once and didn't feel rushed at dinner but getting to dinner. We eat about 7 to 730 at home and eating at 530 or 6 just seems way to early. Plus even if you don't get off the ship I just hate being rushed to change and be ready for dinner. My husband takes the kids to the early shows while I take my time and meet them after the show. Then we can go a game show or one of the other activities, have a drink, listen to music and head to dinner. Much preferred for me at least.